Damn, they did it again...

2 Australian drug smugglers were sentanced to death in Vietnam and our government saved them via a trade, I think that was stupid, I'm sick of this bull crap, they need to be executed. Anyhow what do you think?

"What they have to discover, what all the efforts of capitalism's enemies are frantically aimed at hiding, is the fact that capitalism is not merely the 'practical,' but the only moral system in history."

i agree with gerry, they should have been put to death. not because of the weoght of there crime, but because vietnamese law says that they should.

Law is relative though, if a man steals to feed his family should his hand be cut off?

Drug smuggling is a crime, yes, and it will bring trouble to many many households. But what you have to keep in mind is that if they were caught, so were the drugs(potentially, usually). That being said, an eye for an eye makes the world go blind.

Seriously, the death penalty for drug crimes is as outdated as Sati- where a widowed wife will be thrown in the same flame pit as her deceased husband. Only a few barbaric outposts such as Singapore are uber nazi about "drug crimes."

A serious reassessment followed thru with a complete overhaul of most national laws on drugs will surely see reduced global smuggling rates in the future.

I think thay should be put to death becous if you think about how many pepoles lives would have bin ruend if the drugs would have gottin to theam also vitnam has to take a stand somewhare and how do you get help frome dealing drugs

You're not going to end the drug black market anytime soon, not even with these draconian laws. Drug use and sales is consensual, no coercion is involved so what's the big deal? Do you guys believe in the freedom of choice?

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i agree with gerry, they should have been put to death. not because of the weoght of there crime, but because vietnamese law says that they should.

Everyone uses this excuse, including Nazi war criminals.

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A serious reassessment followed thru with a complete overhaul of most national laws on drugs will surely see reduced global smuggling rates in the future.

Legalizing all drugs will remove the black market and it's violent elements literally over night. Prohibition doesn't work, this has been proven time and time again throughout history. If there is a demand for a product someone will find a means to fill it. It's the simple truth, you cannot legislate morality nor should you.

"The most important single central fact about a free market is that no exchange takes place unless both parties benefit."

Legalizing all drugs will remove the black market and it's violent elements literally over night. Prohibition doesn't work, this has been proven time and time again throughout history. If there is a demand for a product someone will find a means to fill it. It's the simple truth, you cannot legislate morality nor should you.

Actually, in countries like Vietnam, harsh drug laws only gained foot very recently. The unfortunate part is many aid and development programmes in the "international community" thru the WB/ IMF etc., is tied into many mandatory prerequisites. Drug criminilization is a prerequisite.

The USSR on the other hand, never pushed for such agendas when they lent money...

Drug wars are profitable to those who wage them. Yes, give Vietnam $3 billion in aid with compound interest, and make them spend $1 billion of it on completely useless BS such as weapons (for the police- to fight a drug war), helicopters (to find those "evil" drug plantations), etc. So in effect, you effectively only lend out $2 billion yet reap compound interest for 3 billion...add a few more prerequisites- and you've effectively put a stranglehold over the local economy.

Also, not to mention that UN brokered crop substitution programmes have been an utter disaster in every country in the world.

Most of these drug smugglers are in desperate situations, poor and in big debt. So death sentence is just another harsh punishment against the poor. If they are petty bourgeois and smuggling for a thrill or to feed their decadent lifestyle, then hang'em!

Prohibition might not be the most effective means of combating drug use, but at least it's fighting the problem. I don't condone negotiating with an enemy, and likewise I don't condone allowing drugs to enter into society without making an effort to completely eradicate them. Let us fight them, and destroy them, with as much prejudice as possible, for drug use represents one of the most clear and present dangers to society. Let those who traffic in these vile substances burn.

I'm not talking about marijuana. For the most part, I have no problem with marijuana use as long as it's done in private. I'm talking about hard drugs, heroin, crack cocaine, etc. I'm in absolute disbelief that you can seriously defend the use of those and argue in favour of legalization. Maybe you haven't seen what people who use these drugs live with. Maybe you live in a place relatively free from drug use, unlike my hometown of Richmond. Here, even in this relatively affluent community, I still have to step over drug addicts lying comatose on the street on my way to work. I still have to be subjected to harrassment from people feeding me lines like "hey man do you have some spare change? I swear it's not for drugs."

Even if you legalized these drugs, people's lives would still be destroyed. These drugs are extremely addictive. People will still live in squalid poverty, spending entire paycheques on the crap until they become homeless beggars (oops, I forgot, they're called panhandlers here because the term beggars is too politically incorrect). Most people would still die very young from these drugs. There is no way to remove the negative consequences of drug use, so the solution is to kill those disseminating the drugs in my country.

The answer is simple: instead of this pussy war the Americans are waging, institute a shoot to kill policy regarding drug traffickers and dealers. Police will be given the authority to summarily execute them. If organized crime groups take issue with this, arm police officers with assault weapons, call in the military if necessary, and tell the mafia to bring it the frag on. No death penalty, simply shoot them on sight.

Regarding users, create massive prison facilities in northern Canada, where these people are to be held in solitary confinement for as long a time as may be necessary, and upon entry they are to be cut off cold turkey.

I guarantee you, if my ideas were implemented, the drug epidemic in Canada would disappear in a matter of months, if not weeks. The problem with the war on drugs is not that waging war on drugs is unfeasible, it's that the people waging it are taking the soft pussy approach to it. Crack down hard, kill some people, and no problem. Sure, we'd spill some blood, make a few people uncomfortable, but who cares. In the long run, society will be saved.

Kill the dealers and traffickers, imprison the users for decades if necessary. Presto, no problem, after a while anyways.

I'm talking about hard drugs, heroin, crack cocaine, etc. I'm in absolute disbelief that you can seriously defend the use of those and argue in favour of legalization.

As far as hard drugs go, you really cannot battle them through a gun. You can maybe beat back cracked out nazi invaders & SS vanguards using guns, but not drugs.

Drug use is a social problem that can't be countered using law enforcement.

First off, Vietnam has a blanket ban on all vices and the law treats soft & hard substances alike. If they rolled back on softer substances such as marijuana, hashish etc., you'd see demand for substances such as crack automatically drop.

Also, with substances like heroin, the bulk of it is consumed by injection. Having harsh drug laws involving law enforcement would prevent existing heroin users from seeking disposable needles from social services & NGOs. This would complicate a country's efforts to combat blood transmitted disease- most notoriously AIDS, which would add on to the burdens faced by cash strapped economies like Vietnam.

I don't favour legalization of hard drugs, I favour decriminilization- they're different things. But softer substances like marijuana & hashish must be legalized in full and sold in shops.

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Maybe you haven't seen what people who use these drugs live with. Maybe you live in a place relatively free from drug use, unlike my hometown of Richmond.

Uh...I live in India. Does that clear things up? The drug supply in a single city like Mumbai or Kolkatta is greater than all of your country combined, most likely.

And quite strangely, the drug problem mushroomed & compounded only after the idiotically moronic drug prohibition laws were signed.

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I guarantee you, if my ideas were implemented, the drug epidemic in Canada would disappear in a matter of months, if not weeks.

Your ideas were implemented in modern India and in Thailand and I don't see the drug problem having "dissapeared." It has just become murkier & the black marketeers seem to have gotten wealthier. And the police has strangely gotten more corrupt and have become lackeys for the black marketeers.

I'm guessing all this is a result of flawed drug policy more so than say- radiation from a crashed venus probe.

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The problem with the war on drugs is not that waging war on drugs is unfeasible, it's that the people waging it are taking the soft pussy approach to it.

You mean the DEA is taking a "soft pussy" approach to drugs? Hah, where have you been man? And history has shown that taking a hard ass approach only pushes the trade more underground, thus encouraging black market activity even more & compounding already existing social problems.

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Crack down hard, kill some people, and no problem.

Right. Crack down hard, kill some people and no problem.

Unless you think that more powerful black marketeers aren't a problem.

The harsher the laws, the more underground the activity, the greater the price levels and as such- the more powerful the black marketeers- your trafickers, your drug smugglers and so on.

And the more powerful your black marketeers, the greater the chances of them being able to influence the weaker willed members in your law enforcement community. You yourself may be a very principled no doubt, but it's both unrealistic and extremely naive to expect the same from every single law enforcement personnel in your country.

Doing stupid, moronic military style crackdowns on a social issue is synonimous to engaging the best aircraft mechanic in the world to do a heart surgery.

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Regarding users, create massive prison facilities in northern Canada, where these people are to be held in solitary confinement for as long a time as may be necessary, and upon entry they are to be cut off cold turkey.

Can we throw in truckers with blue baseball hats in massive underground prison facilities in Arizona on the side as well?

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If organized crime groups take issue with this, arm police officers with assault weapons, call in the military if necessary, and tell the mafia to bring it the frag on. No death penalty, simply shoot them on sight.

Right, and you expect me to believe law enforcement isin't secceptable to corruption by black marketeers? As a society, we need to naturally wane down the power of these elements. That's done through sensible policy, not through mindless aggression, unless of course- your law enforcement consist of trained great apes that don't know what money, greed or economics is...

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I still have to be subjected to harrassment from people feeding me lines like "hey man do you have some spare change? I swear it's not for drugs."

Oh poor baby has to put up with people asking for change, it must be the next worst thing to living in the Gaza strip! Seriously man- stop whining.

Have YOU even remotely tried setting up a future or something for any of these folks? Now don't give me this "there are so many rehab centres" crap. Have YOU?

Have you even tried giving them 5 f#$king minutes of your so called "precious" time? Instead of looking down on them & scorning at them like trash as if you are some genetically superior species?

You didn't reply to anything I said. I didn't say there would be some kind of law passed, or any special trials, simply shoot and kill all drug dealers on sight. You didn't even address this. They've tried a watered down version of it in Thailand, and it's worked. Not only have they halted the growth in drug use rates, they've actually managed to bring them down a little. That's a massive achievement for a country where previously rates were skyrocketing.

You clearly did not understand anything I said, so I'm going to repeat myself. Anyone seen dealing drugs or caught trafficking them is to be shot on sight. No tickets, no court summons, no lawyers, no arrests, no miranda rights. Simply nine millimetres of cold hard lead. Anyone caught using drugs is to be arrested. When in custody, determine the level of addiction, and imprison them accordingly (ie. if it was just a bit of experimentation, release them with a hefty fine, if they're a full blown addict, ten to fifteen years with mandatory rehabilitation as may be necessary).

Simply kill them all, everyone associated with the drug business. Imprison users. There is no black market, as everyone associated with the substances is dead.

And so you live in a shithole of a country where the police officers aren't worth the air they breathe; that's your problem, not mine. I'm talking about my own country, and the drug problem that's tearing it apart. You may not know what it's like to have police officers that don't demand cash payments before they help you, but I do.

I'm no longer going to reply to your posts because you're only interested in handing out ad hominem attacks rather than deal with the meat of my posts.

You didn't reply to anything I said. I didn't say there would be some kind of law passed, or any special trials, simply shoot and kill all drug dealers on sight. You didn't even address this.

Of course I did. It's not my problem if you didn't see that point addressed. First off, peddlers aren't finite in number. And unlike an invading foreign army, a vice is subject to local demand & exists because of it.

Killing drug dealers on sight will just spawn a new generation of peddlers. As long as there is a demand, there will be people willing to satisfy it, no matter what the risk. If people are willing to take up Alaskan snow crab fishing (fishing for one of these is riskier than going to a war btw)- they'll surely be willing & able to take up drug peddling, if demand in society is large enough. Especially considering the latter is much more profitable.

Again, with stupid draconian laws, you are just going to end up pushing the activity further underground. And the tendency amongst your law enforcement personnel is to go after the peddler & the user more so than the chief supplier- usually a powerful black marketeer. This has happened in Thailand, the US- and every country that has moronic anti drug laws in place.

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Not only have they halted the growth in drug use rates, they've actually managed to bring them down a little.

You mean REPORTED growth in drug use rates? You've surely forgotten the corruption & graft charges metted out against against Thaksin's ex police chiefs? You mean to say I couldn't get away with a 15,000 Bhat bribe to a cop in Khao San road if I got caught with drugs in the height of Thaksin's crackdown campaign in Thailand- even in spite of those "shoot to kill" orders?

And karma surely got the better of Thaksin, serves the coward right. And Thaksin's "shoot to kill" orders produced more civilian casualties in Thailand than any ultra terrorist outfit.

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Simply kill them all, everyone associated with the drug business. Imprison users. There is no black market, as everyone associated with the substances is dead.

Yeah...simply "kill them all" for taking a pill or shooting a syringe

I guess I should be glad you didn't suggest reopening unit 731 for drug users & peddlers.

Your policy is only as good as your law enforcement on the ground. What makes you think they're going to go after cartels & black marketeers who actually do the actual supply generation? Rather than do showcase executions of small time peddlers & grandly orchastrated and televised imprisonment of users?

COnsidering the drug incarceration rates in the US, care to tell me what % of them consist of users / peddlers & actual supply generators?

And considering users are willing to defy health risks to take substances (ex: heroine, MDMA), expecting them to altogether drop their demand after the passage of an anti drug law is moronically naive, no offense. The drug scene will be pushed further underground, and prices will rise. Yet- demand doesn't change.

And unlike panzer divisions, drugs are subject to domestic demand. Trying to stamp out local demand of a commodity with machine guns sounds a bit too childish a proposition.

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And so you live in a shithole of a country where the police officers aren't worth the air they breathe; that's your problem, not mine. I'm talking about my own country, and the drug problem that's tearing it apart.

But too bad for you this article is talking about Vietnam- whose law enforcement personnel & the bureaucracy of law enforcement resembles India more so than Canada. And even if you're talking about Canada- implementing an utterly stupid policy like "shoot to kill" on drug users / peddlers- going by present day ground realities there, you aren't staying in office for more than a few weeks at the most.

I'd issue a "shoot to kill" order if there was a zombie outbreak or something but on normal people who just have a habit? That's ludicrously insanely...dumb. No offense, I'm sorry.

And there's no need to bring my country down into the picture with stupid, brainless labeling. At least till it sold out to UN mandates, it worked by addressing the ground reality of drugs, not defying them.

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I'm talking about my own country, and the drug problem that's tearing it apart.

So you need better social programmes, MUCH more NGO involvement- that don't treat substance users like roadside dirt. And get them involved into the economy rather than point fingers at them sitting in a centrally airconditioned room.

The military should be saved to confront capitalist imperialist expansionists.

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where the police officers aren't worth the air they breathe

Here's what your "open and honest" cops in the "developed world, who don't take bribes" are up to:

In Northeast Atlanta, near Georgia Tech, police made a drug buy from a house and came back with a search warrant, raiding the house. They shot dead a 92 year old woman who had a gun defending her house. The Atlanta police involved seemed, to me, particularly cavalier about the entire matter. "'This seems like another tragedy involving drugs,' [ADA] Howard said."

At least our cops don't go about shooting up 92 year old grannies & making heroes out of themselves over it. There's your "shoot to kill" policy, are you happy? The victims are folks like this more so than the nefarious shady black market operators.

Has this shoot to kill incidents like this stopped drugs in the US? Yeah, right. To actually go down to a "ultra nazi" drug policy- UAE has a death penalty for drugs- especially large quantities of gardah, but with about 2,000- 2,500 AED and by visiting the docks, you can get a willing "freelancer" to smuggle gardah for you with not too much searching. And Saudi too has a death penalty for drugs, but in areas like Jiddah, you can get almost any drug your mind could possibly thirst for by simply visiting a few taxi stands near the ARAMCO complex.

And- here's the consequences of using law enforcement to address a social issue:

Over 75% of the female prisoners in the United States are mothers. It costs taxpayers $20,000 a year per child for foster care. About 1.5 million children have a parent behind bars today.

So, imagine a full on shoot to kill policy, what would that do to the statistics above. That's A LOT of orphaned children there man considering 75% of female prisoners in the drug war are mothers. And as per your idea, they should be brutally gunned down, right?

Orphaning kids & shattering families should be left to the imperialist exploitator and is most certainly not a job for any semi sane Socialist.

And just 3% of those "impounded" for drug crimes are violent offenders- according to the US dept. of prison statistics, that too (check that site). So, 97% are non violent or haven't indulged in violence. And you want to machine gun them down?

I mean you're suggesting that governments use the most extreme form of violence (death) against non violent folk. I mean...what's the rationale behind that?

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I'm no longer going to reply to your posts

Good riddence...

And- Fin Fang Foom put it perfectly:-

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Legalizing all drugs will remove the black market and it's violent elements literally over night. Prohibition doesn't work, this has been proven time and time again throughout history. If there is a demand for a product someone will find a means to fill it. It's the simple truth, you cannot legislate morality nor should you.

I wouldn't "legalize" hard drugs, but I'd most certainly decriminilize it enough to keep it away from law enforcement.